Second Hand GPUs Invades The Market With Declining Ethereum

In recent months, the demand for graphics cards has increased sharply due to rise in interest of cryptocurrency mining. This resulted in a shortage of graphic cards. With rising prices of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, miners are indeed tempted to invest in high-performance equipment as the business has become more profitable. Faced with this strong demand for GPU for mining, AMD and NVIDIA have decided to launch graphics cards dedicated to this activity to avoid a notable increase in prices of ordinary GPU coveted among others by gamers.

In 2013, the cryptocurrency market also benefited from a wave of strong demand for graphics cards due to mining of Bitcoins. The trend has however cooled when the price of Bitcoin fell sharply at the beginning of 2014. The use of GPU became less economical for many Bitcoin Miners. This is likely to recur again with fluctuations in cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum.

This downward trend in the prices of Ethereum is not without any effect on the GPU market. According to the specialized Overclock 3D site, GPUs or graphic cards previously purchased for cryptocurrency mining are beginning to saturate the second-hand market as more and more Ethereum miners selling their hardware and are exiting mining ofEthereum. Other miners are starting to look at other emerging cryptocurrencies, but it is clear that the craze behind Ethereum is dying. The decreased prices of Ethereum has in fact made Ether mining unprofitable for many miners, particularly in regions where electricity costs are above average.

“On second-hand commercial sites like eBay and Gumtree a lot of GPU products appear in recent days, with many AMD GPUs being used in the RX series over the weekend,” says Overclock 3D. ” More hardware is expected to arrive at these sites over the next few days, while some miners are ending their operations, although many are simply turning to a more profitable cryptocurrency or are investing their computing power in an emerging cryptocurrencies that has the prospect of values in the future.

It should be noted that sales of second-hand GPUs are more common in EU countries than in the US, probably due to differences in electricity costs and other variables that affect profitability of mining.

This downward trend in the prices of Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies will reduce the demand for new GPUs and will lead to the flooding of the second hand market with mining equipment. This should allow GPU prices to return to normal levels in the near future; which would be good news for gamers who have suffered from soaring prices. However, they will not be able to rejoice sooner rather than later. It is possible that the ether makes a resurgence, or that another cryptocurrency becomes more powerful. It should therefore be expected that the GPU market will suffer fluctuations unless the suppliers propose appropriate solutions.